Environmental health and preventive medicine
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Environ Health Prev Med · May 2013
Simultaneous measurement of urinary total nicotine and cotinine as biomarkers of active and passive smoking among Japanese individuals.
Measuring urinary cotinine is a popular and established method of biologically monitoring exposure to tobacco smoke. However, the lower detection limit of cotinine often impedes the evaluation of passive (second-hand) smoking and this, together with unconverted nicotine, does not reflect actual levels of exposure. Furthermore, a portion of the Japanese population might have decreased ability to metabolize nicotine. The present study was therefore carried out to validate the simultaneous analysis of total concentrations of free nicotine and cotinine and their glucuronides to determine actual levels of voluntary and involuntary exposure to cigarette smoke. ⋯ The present method can monitor voluntary and involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke. Measuring total urinary nicotine levels might be useful for analyzing exposure to cigarette smoke among non-smokers.